Note for Americans: here WhatsApp is the de facto communication standard. Literally nobody uses SMS/iMessage/Facebook messenger/signal. And carriers still charge 2 euro for a MMS which completely kills iMessage/RCS (if accidentally send MMS, it’s expensive)

I switched phones and instead of copying manually /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp I used the new feature of pairing via qr code.

Besides that’s a not very well designed feature (you need to start transfer on the old phone before logging in the new phone) because they really want to store unencrypted backups on Google drive, the transfer completed in a short time.

Maybe too fast, I was expecting at least one hour to transfer the 5000 photos 10gb, instead it completed in 20 seconds.

So I told myself, ok photos not transferred, I’ll just do that manually and directly put them in the photo archive on my PC rather than keep them mixed with all the “happy holidays” trash.

I browse the old phone to /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp and… It’s empty. Wiped clean after the “successful” transfer process!

Luckily I had set syncthing (the fork on fdroid, the one on play store doesn’t have access to whole storage) to have a full overnight backup! On my PC I still had all the photos, almost deleted too as I noticed that I didn’t set the “trash can” option

Conclusion: go to download syncthing fork from fdroid and have a safety net from mistakes like this

    • Moonrise2473@feddit.itOPEnglish
      141·
      6 months ago

      They decided the pricing 20 years ago during the early days of EDGE data pricing. Then they realized that the money that’s flowing from users that accidentally send them is a gold mine, so they left the crazy pricing

    • gerryflap@feddit.nlEnglish
      10·
      6 months ago

      I wouldn’t be so sure if I were you. Everyone, and I mean everyone, uses WhatsApp here. Friends, family, work, doctors, landlords, etc. Not using WhatsApp will make you miss get togethers with friends, make it way harder to communicate with colleagues, take away a lot of convenience when talking to your doctor or landlord or something.

      I have Signal groups with friends, but you’re never going to be able to fully lose WhatsApp here unless you’re prepared to be “that person” everywhere and miss a lot of convenience.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      6 months ago

      Americans on Lemmy/Reddit always say this, but it’s not easy.

      WhatsApp is essentially SMS. If you don’t use WhatsApp, you’re gonna have a bad time. You won’t be contacted by friends or family, you’ll struggle to make friends or get dates, you won’t receive 2FA codes for a load of services, in some places even government stuff is done via WhatsApp.

      WhatsApp is about as optional as having an email address. You basically need it unless you want to live as a hermit.